


in a veil of great surprises

by kaiyen



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fix-It, Gentleness, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, One Shot, lots of hand imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 08:23:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20597684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiyen/pseuds/kaiyen
Summary: He can see Eddie in his mind’s eye, pale and lifeless, can almost cry at the thought of it. But Eddie’s not lifeless now, not covered in his own blood, so animated and not goddamn dead.Richie, as usual, does something stupid. He kisses him.or; richie tozier stares into the deadlights and fixes things himself





	in a veil of great surprises

**Author's Note:**

> it's 2am go easy on me,, this is short i just wanted to write something bc i am spiralling
> 
> yell at me if there are any obvious mistakes!!

His ears are ringing. A raw headache claws at the back of his eyes, and black spots cloud his vision. Eddie is above him, shakily proclaiming victory, and it is all Richie can do to stare up at him in a daze. It takes him a moment to get his bearings.

“I did it, Richie!” Eddie is telling him. “I think I killed It, I really think I did!” he says, and it is just _oh so familiar_.

Richie knows how this goes, what’s coming next, and fuck, he’s not going to let it happen again. He grabs Eddie by the shoulders and rolls them both to the side, just as It’s oversized claw cleaves through the air where Eddie had been. It slams its talon into the ground beside them in apparent frustration, gouging a gully into the dirt as it pulls back.

Eddie’s babbling again, a stream of unhindered thoughts filled with apologies and curses and profanities, and Richie can’t focus on any of it because Eddie’s safe, Eddie’s _alive_.

Alive, moving, buzzing with boundless nervous energy. It’s worlds apart from how still and limp Richie remembers his body being as he pressed him to his chest. _Remembers?_ he questions. Absent-mindedly, he remembers what Bev said back at the hotel, seeing all of them die after she was caught in the deadlights.

He can see Eddie in his mind’s eye, pale and lifeless, can almost cry at the thought of it. But Eddie’s not lifeless now, not covered in his own blood, so animated and not goddamn _dead_.

Richie, as usual, does something stupid. He kisses him.

It’s brief, barely more than a press of lips, but it shuts Eddie up. It’s brief because it has to be – he cannot linger, not for so long that they cannot get away, not for so long that It takes another swing at them.

Not for so long that it cannot be written off as a result of an adrenaline rush.

They part, and Richie meets his eyes and exhales, feeling that, despite everything, some great weight has been lifted. Eddie watches him, bewildered, like he hasn’t quite pieced it together yet, and Richie can feel his breath on his lips. A moment of calm against the terror of everything around them.

He scrambles to his feet and pulls Eddie with him, leading them both out of It’s reach, towards the rest of the Losers. He can see Eddie’s eyebrows knitting together, and watches him gingerly bring his fingers to his lips as they rush around the edge of the room.

“I know how to kill It,” Richie says breathlessly as they rejoin the group, and he drops his hand from Eddie’s wrist. The skin of his palm is cool against the empty air, mourning the loss of contact.

Eddie stares at his own wrist with an unreadable expression, and Richie can feel something unpleasant toil in his gut. He hears It laugh, and he can’t help but think he’s the butt of some cosmic joke, but he swallows the bile that rises in his throat and tells the Losers what he saw.

He tells them what he saw, and they kill that fucking clown.

And when they clench their hands around It’s pallid heart, Richie’s more focused on the brush of Eddie’s thumb against his forefinger than he is on the grime and gore in his hand. Richie finds himself searching for eye contact, but Eddie’s too focused on It as the clown’s face melts grotesquely and greys into the rocks beneath it.

Unlike in the events that Richie saw as he stared into the deadlights, as it all falls apart around them, he leaves willingly, with Eddie in tow.

*

After, it’s quiet. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears, and it’s all he can hear. None of them speak, lulled into silence as it all begins to sink in. They start walking, and they all know exactly where they’re going.

The bluffs are the same as they always had been. Richie’s surprised he remembers that. He toes his shoes off and sheds his jacket at the top of them, carefully avoiding looking at Eddie as he does. Funny how just a few days ago, he couldn’t remember him at all, and now, his opinion matters to Richie more than anyone else's in the world.

They jump into the water as they did as kids, letting the water absolve them of what came before. The water is still, pleasant in the midsummer sun, just as it was that summer twenty-seven years ago. Richie allows himself to reminisce, think of some of his best memories, and he mourns the loss of a childhood he didn’t even remember until a few days ago. He’ll never be a kid again, and somehow it feels like a loss.

He watches the rest of them. Mike’s watching too, relief and finality on his face, a pleasant contentment Richie can’t remember seeing him have. Bill seems much lighter than he did a few days before, tired but soft-expressioned as he floats on the surface of the lake. Ben and Beverly – well, it’s about time, Richie thinks as he watches them laugh and fawn over each other like they’re thirteen again.

Eddie looks profoundly uncomfortable in the water, like he’s trying to keep as much of himself out of it as possible. Richie can almost hear him, from all those years ago, stating that they’re all going to get leptospirosis or a UTI or something. He laughs fondly at him, feeling his heart ache before he remembers himself.

Richie looks away before Eddie can notice him staring.

Even though it’s over, he can still hear Pennywise’s sing-song voice as he taunts Richie with his _dirty little secret_, and all Richie can think about is that if there’s anything Eddie hates, it’s dirtiness.

He removes his glasses so he can’t see more than a blur where Eddie stands.

He washes his glasses with great focus, trying to scrub the dust out of the crevices. The edge of one of the lenses is loose in its frame where the glass has cracked. He presses his thumb against it experimentally, and it gives way. The shard drops into the lake as his thumb pushes through the gap, slicing a small cut along the end. He hisses, pulling back, and watches as blood wells up to the surface.

Richie lets himself bleed into the water. He doesn’t notice Eddie approach until Eddie tenderly takes his hand out of the water and presses the bottom of his shirt against the cut. Richie distractedly watches the blood seep into the grey fabric, frozen as he wonders why Eddie would sully his clothes even more.

“You’ll get Weil’s disease if you wash that in here,” Eddie tells him, eyes glued to Richie’s hand.

“Yeah, well, I’ve got good insurance,” Richie replies inadequately, his heart in his throat.

Eddie gently handles Richie’s hand, angling it towards the light to get a better view. “It’s not too deep,” he says, before letting it drop.

It’s already slowed bleeding. Richie’s too focused on Eddie to even notice it sting. He keeps his eyes on the water, before he opens his mouth to break the silence. He intends to apologise. He’d rather have Eddie’s friendship than nothing, than lose him for good, and he hopes he hasn’t ruined it all in that one moment of crushing relief in the sewers. “Listen, Eds-”

Eddie kisses him. Eddie places both hands on the side of Richie’s face and kisses him, hard. Richie’s brain short-circuits.

By the time he is over his surprise, Eddie has already pulled away and is staring at him nervously, expectantly.

Richie wants to tell him so much. He wants to tell him he’s sorry he forgot him, that he’s sorry there’s a reality where he dies. He wants to tell Eddie it was him who saved them, who told Richie how to kill It, tell him how brave and strong and heroic he is. Most of all, he wants to tell Eddie how he feels, how he’s felt since he was thirteen and carving their initials into the pale wood of the kissing bridge.

He wants to tell Eddie that he was his first love, and the only love that ever truly mattered.

What comes out is, “You know, I don’t have my glasses on so I don’t know who you are, but thank you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he laughs, and Richie had almost forgotten how much he loved that sound. Eddie smoothly takes Richie’s glasses from his hands and places them on Richie’s face.

“Better?” Eddie asks.

The lens crack obscures his vision, but Eddie is so clear as he stands in front of him. Bedraggled, beaten and soaked through to the skin, yet still, Richie cannot look away. He brings his hand up to cup Eddie’s jaw, rubbing his injured thumb gently against the bandage patched to Eddie’s cheek. Eddie subtly leans into the pressure, and Richie can feel himself _glow_.

Richie pulls Eddie into a kiss, and Eddie kisses back.

**Author's Note:**

> renowned homophobe pennywise the clown... eat my ass x
> 
> find me [here](https://thurmans.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if ya like


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